


Thank you very much for the light

by yourestuckinmyhead



Series: we are only bleeding hearts [2]
Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms
Genre: And love, F/M, a study of grief, and life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 18:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10702482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourestuckinmyhead/pseuds/yourestuckinmyhead
Summary: She survives them all.Of course she does.





	Thank you very much for the light

**Author's Note:**

> This is a spiritual sequel to my fic _In time of daffodils _, which catalogues Klaus' thoughts about humanity and other fun things.__  
>   
> 
> But ultimately that does not need to be read in order to make this make sense (they are only connected in my head, there is no actual link between the two)  
> ________________
> 
> __  
> Anyways, Here is a story of Caroline surviving and grieving and living--post series finale. Enjoy!!  
> 

She survives them all. 

 

Of course she does.

 

A hundred years later and Caroline still hasn’t stopped looking back, but she’s also moving forward. Not forgetting, remembering. She is _living_. 

 

These memories do not own her. Not like they used to.

 

No, these memories propel her forward. These keep her alive—she stands on the top of a mountain range and watches the sun rise and thinks _I’m here, I’m here, I’m here._

 

She keeps her promises, all of them. They are all she has left.

 

A hundred years to the day she puts on her wedding dress, the one she kept in it’s box in Mystic Falls and refused to look at for so long—she didn’t want to be weighed down by that particular future, not by those hopes and dreams and long lost loves. 

 

A hundred years to the day she puts on her wedding dress.

 

A hundred years behind her she puts on her wedding dress and stands in the middle of the field where she fell in love and she says his vows to herself. She says her own aloud.

 

“A hundred years to the day, I remember you. All of your faults and beauties, I remember you. I miss you. I remember this and all the time we didn’t have.”

 

Caroline thinks of those quiet words he whispered to her while they danced. 

 

She smiles while she cries.

 

Caroline stands alive and remembers all the people she’s loved who died.

 

All of them. It’s all of them.

 

______________

 

It’s not quite all of them. But he was a _not quite_ love so maybe that’s why he has survived her.

 

He follows her.

 

Not literally, of course, no. 

 

No.

 

He hangs on her like a memory, lingers like a bruise, knows her steps like a shadow.

 

Not literally, though. No, these are just similes.

 

But it’s enough to know that he’s tied to her like a promise kept.

 

Mostly because, _of course_ , he’s keeping one.

 

______________

 

The phone is ringing ringing ringing.

 

_answer_

 

_please._

 

 _Please. I’m calling out for you_.

 

“Leave a message, love.”

 

_Please._

 

“Is this voicemail just for me? Am I the only reason you’ve kept this phone?”

 

______________

 

She thought he was dead to the world, for a long time.

 

Her own life hung from her skin and bones. 

 

_Where oh where has my soul gone? Am I not alive?_

 

Caroline clung on to the dream she had, the goals she had for the future. Held on with two hands to the hope she had and lived her life. That’s what Caroline Forbes does. 

 

From miles and miles away, she felt it.

 

The cosmic shift.

 

_There right there._

 

An awakening.

 

______________

 

 

A ringing.

 

“Please leave your message at the beep!”  


 

A deep sigh.

 

“Honestly, love. I’ve risen from the _grave_.”

 

______________

 

 

She had gone to New Orleans. 

 

Of course she had. 

 

There he was, in the world again.

 

A puzzle piece she wasn’t sure she was missing. One that might have been gone all along, or one that she had lost along the way.

 

But no. 

 

There it was, with the person she had left it with. 

 

The first thing he said when he saw her was, “Is this for now or forever?”

 

She didn’t answer, had walked in and answered her own question.

 

 “You’ve always known.”

 

Klaus had looked at her with those steady sad eyes.

 

“I’ve never been one to cage things that were never meant to stay.”

 

______________

 

Maybe it was for the better, the lone wanderer shtick. 

 

It kept the everyone at bay, let her explore the world, kept her moving forward.

 

Isn’t that what she wanted, after all?

 

Perpetual motion.

 

How long must she stay alive? 

 

She wonders, not for the first time.

 

How did he do it? How did they? How did they survive the planet and time and each—

 

Other. 

 

And that’s her answer, isn’t it?

 

______________

 

Words. They are suffocating her. 

 

Youth gave her no perspective on promises. Prophecies. 

 

Words. They had ghosted across her cheek with the softest touch, and now look where she was.

 

Caroline was cursed, she must be. 

 

There was nothing else stopping her, not anymore, only words that tied her down so long ago. 

 

She wonders if he knew what he was doing, when he said them. If he knew how it would cost her, a thousand years, a century later.

 

A decade.

 

______________

 

So long ago she stood in Klaus’s parlor.

 

He hadn’t stopped staring out the window, taking in the view.

 

“It appears the world has not waited for me.”

 

“Only you could be so full of yourself to think it would.”

 

Silence. The two of them in a room surrounded by their own echoes.

 

“Is it really so unbelievable? The world stopping. Caroline, a thousand years and I haven’t missed a minute and now—”

 

“You don’t belong here anymore.”

 

“Maybe I never did, love. And the world simply decided to stop pretending.”

 

______________

 

Dancing, slowly and softly.

 

She can almost hear the music, almost feel fingertips digging into her waist.

 

These are just memories from too long ago.

______________

 

Caroline dreams of the world as it could have been, if she had gotten her forever. She stands on top of Kilimanjaro and breathes deep the too thin air she doesn’t need and reaches back for a hand that is not there.

 

Here she is, in the world alone. 

 

Caroline dreams of the world as it is, now that she knows her time is borrowed. She stands on a mountain but is remembering a warm summer field when she was in love and before that when the bell rang and her human heart jumped like it always did when she was falling and after when everyone she loved was alive and well even though she hadn’t been either of those things.

 

Here is Caroline in the world not thinking just being and she is alone in all the ways she has never been. 

 

He is no longer kept from her by words he pressed into her skin after she made him writhe. 

 

They share the promise of an end together. That’s all. Caroline knows that is not enough for her, not anymore.

 

She is too old for that sort of foolishness. It was never enough for her.

 

She is older than the roots she pulls from the ground. She knows that a love is not about how it ends or begins. She knows how that sounds. She knows how terrible it is to say that even death will not tear her best friend from her heart. She stands on a mountain top a hundred years later and she aches and she aches alone.

 

What could Klaus know of a love like that? What does he know besides ends and means and games meant to be played and lost.

______________

 

She had gone to New Orleans with the expectation that he would follow her.

 

That’s what he does.

 

He was supposed to hang from her like an executioner's noose, he was supposed to wrap himself around her bones and hold himself to her. 

 

And yet.

 

Caroline had kissed him softly, had caressed his cheek and pressed her body against his. She had done all the things he would have killed for not fifty not twenty not ten years earlier and he had done nothing but pull her hands away and say, “you kiss like I am a long lost friend, my darling.”

 

“You kiss like you wish I was someone else. Like I am someone else.”

 

“Once, when you kissed me—love, you were electric, you were the sun and heat and fire. When you kiss him you are soft and careful and quiet.”

 

“I don’t want you when you are his. I want you when you are yours _._ You want me when I am mine.”

 

He had whispered these things to her, had stood too close.

 

“I am not the man you once knew, love. I carry someone else with me.”

 

He had never been so far away.

______________

 

How many times must her own heart break. How many times must she fall, stumble, plummet her way into foolishness. 

 

How many times will she cry at her own funeral. How many times at someone else's.

 

She kills herself off a hundred times and she still hasn’t truly tasted death.

 

Her daughters die together. Caroline nearly ends herself the moment their hearts stopped beating.

 

Rick and Bonnie and Matt and Elena and even Damon. Stephan. All human in their hearts and monsters in their souls. 

 

They have all been murderers, once. Twice. 

 

(Hundreds of times)

 

She is the only one who walks, though. The only one who didn’t hate the way flesh felt in her mouth, under her nails. 

 

She was the only one who wouldn’t hesitate to bleed.

 

Her phone is ringing.

 

Or maybe it’s her just wishing that he would call.

 

______________

 

BEEP

 

“You know, I never did get to meet your girls. I regret missing the opportunity...Caroline, if they were anything like you, there is no doubt in the world that they were spectacular. I bet they were incredible.”

 

END CALL

 

______________

 

“Hello?”

 

“Oh, um. Sorry. I had a speech or something. A message...uh. I didn’t expect you to pick up.”

 

“I could hang up? We can try again, I’ll ignore your call. Pinky promise.”

 

“No, that would be a little ridiculous, wouldn’t it? I mean… I can just say...fuck. I’m two hundred years old, how am I still this awkward—like a dumb teenager. Or something. Uh, anyway. I just wanted to say thank you.”

 

“For?”

 

“Uh, your message, the one you left. No one I know really understands. I mean. No one could ever know what it was like, the very blood in my veins could have kept them with me, but then they would just be monsters…I mean. You know? Don’t you?”

 

“I’m not as valiant as you.”

 

“What?”

 

“As soon as Hope was old enough, she turned. Her whole family, we are all vampires, Caroline. There was never any other choice.”

 

“I suppose, they were two very different situations.”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

“Would you have let her stay human, if she had asked?”

 

“Would you have turned your own children?”

 

“Klaus.”

 

“Caroline.”

 

“You can’t ask me that.”

 

“Why not, my child still walks Caroline. Do you resent that? Wish you chose differently?”

 

“I just wanted to thank you.”

 

“Then why does it sound like you are saying goodby—”

 

______________

 

Two hundred years to the day.

 

Imagine that.

 

Two whole centuries.

 

But which day? Which grave? Who is she mourning or celebrating or forgetting?

 

Does it even matter, anymore.

 

______________

 

He shows up when she’s eating her way through Europe. Tearing out its insides and making it  bleed.

 

(She is a monster, after all.)

 

“That’s not what you are, love.”

 

“No? And here I thought my fangs and hunger meant that it is.”

 

“This isn’t you.”

 

“You don’t know who I am, I’ve killed a hundred times before.”

 

“Not like this, you don’t take from people like this. Without purpose and respect.”

 

“It’s not like you’ve ever had a problem with murder.”

 

They should be snarling while they say these things to each other, instead of pleasantly arguing as if the person now corpse in her hands isn’t there. Like there wasn’t blood on her lips and skin in her teeth and the woman she had just eaten hadn’t lost a shoe a few yards back when she had tried to run, when Caroline had let her run just to get the blood pumping to give herself a little _thrill_.

 

He is talking like he hadn’t let her.

 

_What a pathetic piece of—_

 

______________

 

You’re wondering, now, what the point of all this has been. Maybe, you pose, it was to show a starling, a finch, a docile bird—something with wings and feathers that flew among the light—become a wolf, a creature of darkness and pain because of how it was dealt darkness and pain.

 

Abyss meet the Abyss. Say hello to each other and yourself. 

 

Maybe, you ask, this was all to show an exchange. A shift in the roles. Here is the monster presenting mercy to the merciful who became a monster. Here is the monster stowing away it’s teeth and claws and becoming both more and less and different altogether.

 

I’ll tell you, if you want. Here, come close. I’ll whisper it real close to your ear and you can pretend it is just the wind. Are you ready?

 

(Time ruins.)

 

______________

 

He comes at her as a wolf and bites her with his teeth.

 

He can play these games.

 

A century ago, two, he made a promise—promises.

 

And if there is one thing he knows, it is how to stay true. Loyal, even. 

 

So, he bites her. It’s the only thing that can be done, really. This is the thing she would do, maybe, if she was in his position. He wonders if this is how she felt when she dung that knife in and twisted as she screamed. 

 

He wonders if this is his moment. 

 

It might be.

 

(it’s not)

______________

 

Caroline wonders, not for the first time, if she is destined to die on her back, the fight dragged out of her.

 

It’s not so hard to imagine, given her track record with these things. 

 

Klaus is glaring at her like he has something to prove, like he could burn through her skin and expose the old, shiny her. 

 

Like all she needs is a polish. Don’t worry the pain and the mourning and the cynicism. That’s just the tarnish, the _age_ , talking. 

 

“You know, I used to think that you were the most impeccable creature. There you were, over a thousand years old, perfectly preserved in a way that made me want to tear at your bones and prove that you had walked as many miles as you had promised.”

 

Now, she watches him. Delights in finding him unsettled.

 

“What, you thought I genuinely didn’t care? Maybe I should have called your bluff about the intrigue…dreams…but…now I get it. I never pegged you for insecure.”

 

She’s got him. Can see the rage bubbling up into something wonderful.

 

“If you want to compare insecurities, love, all you need to do is ask.”

 

“If you wanted me to die, you would have done it years ago.”

 

“I’m never going to force you into anything. I never would have. ”

 

“So, let's get this show over with, shall we?”

 

______________

 

_Calling…_

 

“You’ve reached the voicemail box of…”

 

“Caroline, how many times are we going to dance around each other? I don’t...no one ever expected me to grow a heart. Did you know that? Even as a human all those years ago in the dirt and stench people knew what I was, the monster brother...But here I am, Caroline. And I wonder if you even recognize what that means.”

 

______________

 

Three hundred years to the day she stops counting. 

 

She actually stopped a while ago but just tallied up her milage on a whim and picked a day to mourn. There’s something for every day of the year.

 

On this day, she was raped by Damon Salvator for the first time, and no one ever cared enough to listen to her screams. 

 

They forgave him. Somehow, they convinced her to as well.

 

Fuck them. Fuck that. 

 

“You want to know why I hate compulsion?”

 

“I want to know everything about you.”

 

“Well, when I was sixteen, Damon Salvator came to town. And I was blown away, like the vapid teenager I was...so sad and dumb and sucked in by the slightest bit of attention...I wouldn’t have registered to you, would have killed me a hundred times. I can see it now, actually. You’ve already killed the human version of me a thousand times. I was insignificant.”

 

“What did he do.”

 

It is not a question.

 

“You know.”

 

She can feel it, the anger growing in him. Even through the phone.

 

“Don’t bother, he’s been gone a long time.”

 

“I’m so sorry, Caroline.”

 

“Apologize to the other girls. I've had enough men tell me they’re sorry.”

 

______________

 

“Are there others out there you call love?”

 

She can hear his sigh through her phone.

 

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to know.”

______________

 

He wonders, sometimes, how they are never at the right page, the right pace, the right place. 

 

Globe trotting in opposite circles. 

 

 _This is a dance,_ she left him once, a note tucked under his door.

 

He wishes that she would breathe that against his skin, he dreams that when she does it it doesn’t come with a hiss but with a laugh.

 

He leaves the note where it lays, and walks out the door.

 

______________

 

Rebekah calls her one day, when she’s running her way through Tokyo.

 

“When, exactly, did your heart turn to stone?” And her tone is all scorn and impatience, the way it always is and always has been.

 

“I have no idea what you mean.”

 

“Yeah,” Rebekah cackles and it becomes her. “I’m sure you don’t.”

 

“Tell your brother I send my regards.”

 

“How do you know he still wants them, sweet.”

 

______________

 

 

Caroline is struck, suddenly, that this is the first time in four hundred years that he has left her. 

 

It’s not like the first time, when she had sunk her teeth into his skin and bought herself another promise of infinity with his blood and he had walked away with an I.O.U coursing through her veins.

 

It’s not like the second time when he presented her with gifts or the third time when he presented her with gifts or the third time when he presented her with gifts and she told him, no. You are not enough for me.

 

This is not like that other time when he told her she hung the moon and she told him that he was nothing more than an angry angry man, how dare he claim that she inspire that rage. 

 

The fifth time when she wanted to beg him to make them all bleed.

 

The sixth when she bargained and recognized just how much of this was all a game to him. A chase. A victory. How they had all stood before him and been nothing more than fleas, than gnats, than insects that would crawl and die in mere minutes compared to the lifetimes he’s lived.

 

She realized they were all children playing at heroes and somehow that might be enough to not die, not in that moment. 

 

She would not die, and that was the seventh time she walked away from him and lived to tell the tale. 

 

It was the eighth she refuses to regret, how she had finally won in the game of promises and made a deal with the devil that he couldn’t refuse, not with his greedy eyes and hands and body and maybe even heart that had wanted nothing more than to crush her. Maybe even cherish her. 

 

It’s the eighth time she refuses to forget his tongue and fingers and the way they had curled, the way they had made her scream and it was the first time she didn’t curse how forever he was. Not when he was this good, and felt that good and how he wished into her skin all the miles and years he had traveled just to find her there in the forest and how all the blood and death and life had been worth it just to hear her say his name with reverence just that once _._

 

It’s the eighth time she makes him leave and it’s after that time she promises she’s done with him, and she thinks, for a second, that he might be done with her.

 

But he had never left her alone like this, now.

 

No, he had always been waiting in the wings in a way she had never recognized, he had always been nothing but a phone call away. And now she calls him and 

 

“Klaus? Are you there?”

______________

 

He sends her a letter on actual paper, and it’s so unlike the synthetic kind people use nowadays—soft and loose with fibers warped by time—she almost weeps. 

 

_I heard you had questions._

 

_I’m waiting._

 

She does the darnedest thing— she cries.

______________

 

She shows in the middle of a meadow she promised she would never return to.

 

He is lying down, face turned up at the sky and she wonders if he is asleep.

 

(she would never dare dream him dead)

 

“Caroline, half a century to the day—you appear.”

 

“I didn’t know you’ve been keeping track of time.”

 

He looks at her, teeth bared and covered in blood and he grins that sick grin and laughs that sick laugh but his eyes his eyes his eyes are all but madness

 

“I am one thousand eight hundred and fifty seven years old. I’ve been keeping track of clocks and seconds and deaths far longer than any calendar has, and you think I can forget the day you got married?”

 

She looks at him with a clean mouth but monstrous angry empty empty eyes that used to g l o w so bright

 

“I am 525 years old, and I can’t let go of the first 25 years. They play over and over and over and nothing after them seems real. I sit and remember all day and it’s like I’m trapped by all the possibilities, all those past memories.”

 

He sits up from the ground, wipes away the gore and he looks so cavalier her heart almost beats.

 

“Here I thought you had decided on living, love.”

 

She wants to fold herself into the imprint he’s left in the grass—wants to collapse into his shadow and become less of herself.

 

“I am afraid that life and love have done nothing but turn my iron bones to rust and caste my heart in stone.”

 

“How dreary.”

 

“How dismal.”

 

It starts to rain.

 

______________

 

They sit side by side, casually waiting for the storm to pass.

 

“It’s okay, my love.”

 

“What?”

 

“It’s okay to miss them, it’s okay to cry and mourn and die, but eventually you will have to move on.”

She thinks of her wedding dress, of candle light fires, of hearts and heartbreaks and the daughters and lovers who had been hers and not hers enough.

 

“I think I have some promises I need to bury.”

 

“Okay, my love. Let’s go dig you some graves.”

 

______________

 

It’s years later.

 

It’s raining.

 

She is standing in the middle of a field and laughs in delight, because there are so many people who have made her smile, and she thinks

 

_how lucky how lucky how lucky I am_

 

The water is rushing over her, and she reaches back for the hand she knows will be waiting for her. She sighs and tells her lover,

 

“Years ago, a man I loved danced with me and whispered something to me—I thought it was a blessing, then. A curse. Do you want to know what it was?”

 

“I want to know all of you, my dear.”

 

She grabs his hands, guides them to her waist hums a song she half remembers from so long ago and whispers,

 

“My darling, my dear"

 

He glides them into a dance

 

"you will survive us all.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed that experience, and that it didn't cause nearly as much pain as I did writing this damn thing.
> 
>  
> 
> _please comment! ___  
> ____________  
>  __  
> Title from "Thank you for the light" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a wonderful short story if you have the time to read it.  
> 


End file.
